With President Bush's recent veto concerning stem cell research funding, hope for finding quick cures to many devastating diseases has dimmed in this country. However, there is still a bright spot on the horizon for sufferers of juvenile diabetes.

Unlike type 2, or adult onset diabetes, juvenile diabetes is an autoimmune disease that only strikes children and young adults, and it can't be managed simply by changing eating and exercise habits. Also called "insulin-dependent" diabetes, the Type 1 version involves the complete shutdown of the pancreas, the body's natural insulin-producing organ. Without insulin, we can't process the food we eat. Blood sugars quickly climb to toxic levels while the body essentially starves.

Insulin injections provide life support to millions of Americans -- including my son -- but they aren't a cure. It's a daily game of "whack-a-mole" with life or death consequences, as sufferers alternately treat high and low blood sugar levels by administering insulin or carbohydrates. Over the long haul, diabetes takes its toll on the body, affecting the eyes, liver, heart, circulatory system, etc. It's not a pretty picture.

Luckily, through efforts of single-minded organizations like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the likelihood of finding a cure during my child's lifetime is extremely high. Several promising therapies are coming closer to fruition -- from a "closed-loop" artificial pancreas that senses insulin needs and dispenses the hormone without human interaction, to targeted transplants of insulin-producing islet cells without the need for dangerous anti-rejection drugs.

The House and Senate have caught the excitement from their constituents over the closeness of a cure. In a rare show of bipartisan support, Senators Dorgan (D-ND) and Domenici (R-NM) have introduced a bill to reauthorize the Special Diabetes Program. This past week, Representatives DeGette (D-CO) and Kildee (D-MI) introduced the House companion bill. These bills will extend the Special Diabetes Program for five years and increase funding from $150 million per year for type 1 diabetes research to $200 million per year.

Despite the tremendous support for the bill, JDRF is urging voters to contact their representatives this week to ask for their vote in favor of S.1494 in the Senate and H.R. 2762 in the House. To make it easy, JDRF has set up a Web page that will automatically e-mail your legislators and ask for their vote. It takes only a minute, and could help millions lead longer, healthier and happier lives.

Its funny how the both liberals and conservatives like to claim that ending slavery was the pinnacle accomplishment of their ideology...You realize that the "personal liberty" argument was used by the slave owners back then? They felt they had the right to own slaves and that the government had no place telling them what they could or could not do. I hear that very same rhetoric espoused by conservatives on this website every day (not about owning slaves)... well if the government had not intervened, had not "infringed" on the slave owners "personal liberties", where would we be? The event is significant because the majority had their civil liberties policed, so that the minority could enjoy civil liberties. Sometimes, that has to happen, one person, one party has to lose a freedom so the others can gain some essentials. I just think it is important that we understand that...

If stem cell research is a moral issue, it is only because politicizing scientific research with tremendous yields to further a religious agenda is completely amoral.We will be taxed regardless. Democrat, republican, they will all take their bite, if I'm going to pay either way, I want my money going to further the science that will save lives. Simple.

The definition of "life" aside, will those frozen blastocysts ever be grown into a fetus? If we leave them alone, they eventually deteriorate or are destroyed... These are discarded in vitro excess. They will never sit next to you in home room, they will never cook your breakfast, you will never see them running for office... Delaying research by denying dollars is the only way lives are lost. These blastocysts never had a real chance and never will have one. Why not protest in-vitro fertilization instead?

quote: I also want my tax dollars going to further science that will saves lives - without taking lives first. Simple.

Simple for you, since you choose to ignore the tradeoffs and consequences of the decision. Even if you take the extreme view that an embryo created in a lab and existing in a cryo chamber is human life, you are ignoring the greater good that can come from helping to find cures for diseases that cause millions to suffer and die.

You are effectively arguing on a moral principle that the death of an embryo is more significant than the death of a child or adult. That makes no sense at all. And you feel justified in believing that because you hope that solutions will be found through other methods of research. Although that is possible, the practioners working to find cures clearly believe that stem cell research is the fastest path to success. The fastest path to success is the one that can save the most lives.

Luckily not everyone agrees with your flawed value system, and so the research continues.